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Tales From the Carypt

I’ve blogged before about the love/hate relationship I have with the 97 Saturn I drive. But I think I reached a new plateau today.

The ol’ Saturn came from the factory just 14 short years ago equipped with an electric sunroof. Somewhere between then and when it came into my possession, the sunroof was the victim of some type of catastrophic event that resulted in a twisted, screeching, scraping sound being emitted whenever you push the open button. It was really quite horrifying the first time I pushed it, almost like a Bengal tiger had descended onto my car and was attempting to peel back the roof like a can opener.

For the first few years, I just accepted that the sunroof was broken and wouldn’t open. But the cover that normally slides forward to hide the glass part was also broken, and stuck in the rearward position. So I always had the sun shining in on my head. One day I decided I would try to fix it. Three minutes of tinkering, then pushing, then pounding and I was through trying to fix it and just wanted to see if I could manually force it open.

I was somewhat successful, in that it opens now, but not without some sort of prying device. Luckily I keep a crowbar in my trunk, so this summer I promoted my crowbar to the passenger seat for quick access on hot days. It’s common now to see me in the parking lot after work prying at the sunroof of my car just like in Grand Theft: Auto. Except one look at the car and everyone knows I’m not stealing it.

Yesterday, I had driven to work with the windows down and sunroof open (because the A/C quit working and I can’t justify spending any money on it, it would be like resealing your driveway when your house is on fire). It seemed sunny enough, so I went into work without thinking twice. About 5 minutes into a 1pm conference call, it was brought to my attention that it was now raining. Hard. Like rivers in the parking lot hard (too soon to The Nashville Flood of 2010?) I ran outside, closed everything up, got drenched, and looked forward to getting home with a large wet spot on the back of my pants that evening.

So today, when I got to work, I played it smart and left only the passenger window open so that I could continue to air out the car from the internal hose-down of the previous day, but minimize the damage should another storm pop up.

And another storm did pop up. But this time, as I weighed my options, the prospect of running out into the rain to save only the passenger side of my car seemed less automatic than in the past. A thought occurred, “What if I leave it?” Passenger seat and floor get soaked. Not the first time that’s happened, probably more like the 15th (seriously). I am in no more discomfort than normal on my drive to and from work for the next few weeks before it drys out.

So I remained seated at my safe, dry cubicle while water poured into my car. Meh.

Note: I have zero intention of ever reselling this car to anyone, or else I might care more. My conscience couldn’t take it. Between the broken parking break, the leaky window seals, and the disintegrating interior, I’ve decided that it’s my moral obligation to ensure that the only part of this car that will ever be reused anywhere is the engine, since it seems like it will never. ever. die.

Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 6:22 pmand is filed under Random. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Tales From the Carypt”

1. backfire Says:
   July 13th, 2010 at 4:03 pm

   [...] Tales From the Carypt [...]